1. Field
The present invention relates to a terminal device, an information processing method, a program, and a storage medium that are suitably applied to an electronic device including a touch panel detecting an operation to an operation surface based on a change in a capacitance occurring between an indicator such as a finger or a stylus pen, etc. that touches or approaches the operation surface and the operation surface.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, touch panels have been increasingly adopted for terminal devices including a mobile phone terminal, a high performance mobile information terminal having a call function, what is referred to as a smart phone, a tablet terminal, and so forth, as input devices for which users perform the operation. The touch panel is a device including a display unit displaying an image, etc. and a position input device such as a touch sensor, which are integrated into one body.
A specified operation is conducted via an icon displayed on the screen of a display unit of a terminal device having a touch panel by a user to execute an application, which is associated with the icon, in accordance with the operation. Known examples of operation methods include a tap operation conducted by tapping a screen, a drag operation conducted by moving a touched indicator such as a finger and a stylus pen from a specified position to another position, a flick operation conducted by moving the finger or the indicator on a screen in such a way to make a quick sweeping stroke.
The input operation is recognized by the terminal device based on, for example, information about a position in coordinate system on the screen. The positional information of user's finger or indicator attaching or approaching the touch panel is obtained during a series of operations performed from when the finger or the indicator touches the panel to when the finger or the indicator leaves the panel. Specifically, information about, for example, the amount of a change of the position in the coordinate system per unit time, the moving speed of the position in the coordinate system, and an area on the screen where a touch is detected, etc. is used as information specifying the details of an operation. Upon detecting a movement of the touch position when the user's finger or the indicator is in the state of touching, for example, it is recognized that the flick is performed. When no movement of the touch position is detected, it is recognized that the tap is performed.
Since information to be used to select an operation is thus limited, the types of operations that can be detected with a touch panel are also limited. Subsequently, the need to input plural types of operations in combination arises according to a function requested to be achieved, and the details of an operation may be erroneously recognized in some cases. As a method of reducing the occurrence of erroneous recognition of this kind, the method of recognizing an operation with increased precision by determining the details of an operation based not only on a touch operation detected on an operation surface, but also on a detection result obtained in a near position is disclosed in Patent Literature 1, for example.